If you’re reading this at 1:05 PM and you haven’t adjusted your clocks, it is too late. Dom Brown finally gets a day off as Cole Hamels leads the Phils against the Houston Astros in Kissimmee in game 16 of 32. Most of the top-tier players are traveling with the team today and, minus Brown’s day off and Jimmy Rollins in the WBC, this is likely a line-up you could see in May or June.

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Ian Riccaboni has written 839 articles on Phillies Nation.

Ian's athletic achievements include getting stuffed by NBA center Aaron Gray in high school and hitting .179 over four years for NYU against D-III, NAIA, JuCo, and NCBA schools. Ian hopes his athletic successes will help him achieve his dream of becoming the underground Bob Uecker.

Nice inning for Cloyd with defensive help from Cesar Hernandez. Two assists, one a nice play to his left. Hernandez could go a ways toward deciding the Phils position on Chase. 5 year pro not even at Triple A to date, but still only 23 years old.

He’s still developing. I think he’s 22, and barely has any experience above AA. He seems like he’s got the stuff, just needs to be more consistent. I wish he was still here, but that’s the price of trade. Pitvhed real well against the Phils earlier this spring, but not today.

Out of all the prospects the Phillies traded away for Halladay, Lee, and Pence, who has actually panned out..I see D’Arnaud is a top prospect for Mets this year, but having knee surgery as a catcher isn’t a good sign..

Maybe some of those prospects haven’t been much, but the latest trade packages have been low minor leaguers with high upside and may still prove to be excellent ML players when they’re called up. I believe a couple of the guys the Phils traded for Pence have yet to reach 21 years of age. Sometimes it takes more than a year or two to truly evaluate a trade, particularly when such young players are involved.

Also, many catchers besides D’Arnaud have had knee surgery, so I’m sure he’s still a top prospect in the minds of most scouts.

No, and you can include the Oswalt deal also. Anthibny Gose might still be a wish we still had him, but even just a good half season out of Roy, and it was very good, to this point was a plus deal.

By the way, while the Pence deal yielded good prospects, even if the deal looks bad down the road, Tommy Joseph was part of the return, and perhaps he winds up softening any pain that develops out of it. And you’d think Singleton will indeed provide pain even by his lonesome.

I haven’t heard many people criticize the Halladay and (original) Lee trades. The Oswalt and Pence trades are another story though. Eddie Wade did very well in those deals. The Phillies gave up a lot (probably too much) for two guys who were here for a short amount of time.

While the jury is still out on the players the Phils gave up in those deals – to me, the Pence deal was by far the worst – the jury is not out on how much they gave up at the time relative to what other teams may have given up for similar players. When you compare the package that the Phils gave up for Pence to the package that the Braves gave up for Bourn, who arguably was a better player than Pence, it is clear (based on how those players were rated at the time) that the Phils gave up more. This is important because, had they given up a comparable package for Pence that the Braves gave up for Bourn, they might have held onto some prospects who could have enabled them to trade for Justin Upton or they might be in position to trade for Chase Headley.

Results-based analysis is only part of the equation. Analysis of the deal at the time is also important and it was obvious on August 1, 2011 that they overpaid for Pence.

While Bourn and Pence are somewhat comparable players, they don’t play the same position and don’t have identical skillsets. I don’t defend the Pence deal, because it was a clear overpay, but at the time the front office thought they needed more of a power bat, preferably a righthanded bat, and had no real use (at the time) for Bourn. In other words, trade value can’t be totaly based on what other teams may have given up, because other teams have different needs. If a team wants a power bat, they might have to pay more to get it. If the trade partner has no use for a speedy outfielder, they may let him go for less.

One other factor in comparisons should be contract length. In the case of Bourn, Atlanta got one season, then lost him as a free agent, netting only a compensatory draft pick in return. The Phils got Pence with two years of control, and when he didn’t work out were able to flip him for a highly regarded prospect playing a premium position.

As I said, the Pence deal was a clear overpay, but it has little to do with what the Braves were able to do with Bourn. A better comparison, based more on types of skills, might be Pence and Beltran, although once again, service time enters in.

Two other factors I think are many times missed in trade comparisons: players’ ages and potential. In the cases of Pence, Bourn, and Beltran, none of these are even close. Beltran was considered to be near the finish line, career-wise (although, strangely, he actually got better the following year with the Cards), Bourn is likely starting on the downslope, and Pence, at the time, was actually entering his so-called prime. These may all be projections, as Beltran’s unexpected performance showed, but they are factors any GM will use in evaluating what to give up for which player. Sometimes they get it wrong; sometimes the numbers do lie. A GM doesn’t have the all-seeing prognosticating power of a fan looking back, and he can’t make up hypotheticals oconcerning who he might have gotten had he not done that initial deal. (Well, I suppose he could, if he wants ulcers!)

hk, the age inaccuracy doesn’t invalidate the rest of his comments. He makes a particularly good point about how much a power bat is worth compared to a defense/speed player. It may not be the correct way or fair way to look at things, but like it or not, it’s the way many of these FO’s have operated over the years, almost always overvaluing power. Just look at this years FA signings of Hamilton and Bourn. Was there that much difference to their value? No, but Hamilton gets more than double and an extra year.

I am neither defending the team or placing blame for the Pence deal, just pointing out that IMO- comparing to the Bourn deal is not the way I look at it.

That said, I’m in full agreement that it would have been nice to keep some of those pieces for a Chase Headley deal.

Hamilton has been so much better than Pence that his contract as compared to Bourn’s has no place in a comparison of July 2011 Pence vs. July 2011 Bourn. BTW, I agree that some front offices have stressed power over speed and defense in the past; however, that doesn’t mean it is (or was) the right thing to do.

I know that WAR is not the be-all and end-all statistic, but it is worth noting that Pence plus Schierholtz, who came over in the Pence deal, provided the Phils with 3.9 WAR in 749 PA’s (0.0052 WAR per PA) while Bourn provided the Braves with 7.6 WAR in 952 PA’s (0.0080 WAR per PA). In summary:

1. The Phils gave up much better prospects for Pence than ATL did for Bourn.
2. The Phils got worse production (as measured by WAR) from Pence + Schierholtz than ATL did from Bourn.
3. The Phils paid Pence + Schierholtz ~$7.6M while ATL paid Bourn ~$8.345M.
4. Going forward, the Phils have Tommy Joseph to show for originally acquiring Pence while ATL has a sandwich pick to show for originally acquiring Bourn.

Most people don’t break down age to months and days. I’m sorry if I kept it to years.

That said, speed guys are generally considered to age faster (They always say the legs are the first things to go). I may not agree with that, but it’s one reason why even at the time of the trade, most fans thought Pence was a bit younger, and one of the reasons why many people on this very site thought signing Bourn as a free agent would be a bad move by the Phils.

The two of them, Pence and Bourn, are not comparable players, in my opinion. If you believe they are, that’s your opinion. I feel I’ve presented some valid arguments as to why they aren’t (power hitter vs. contact and speed, length of team control, and others’ perceptions, right or wrong, about age). You only picked on the age discrepancy (and Bourn IS older), which would indicate to me that that’s your only defense of your position.

And as I clearly stated, I thought Pence cost too much. I don’t need other teams’ dealings to tell me that.

One last thing: although the Phils might have some extra trade chips if they’d kept those prospects, it’s pure conjecture to think they might have scored Headley or Upton. Again, it depends on the other team’s needs, and depends too on timing. Plus, there still might be a very good market for the Phil’s catching depth, acquired partly with Pence.

On Bourn’s and Pence’s respective ages and on aging, they are practically the same age and I don’t recall anyone expecting Bourn to slow down in his age 28 or age 29 season. I was among those who did not want Bourn for his age 30 season, but I also would not want Pence for his age 30 season, especially at the $13.8M price tag that San Francisco has him.

On team control, you are correct that Pence came with one more year of team control. He also came with a higher contract in 2011, which meant he would most likely get more than Bourn via arbitration (or via a pre-arbitration settlement) in 2012 and that Pence would command a very large contract in 2013. It turned out that way, too, as Pence and the Phils settled for $10.4M for 2012 while Bourn and the Braves settled for $6.845M for the same season. Team control is great, but only when the player is cheap. All other things being equal, I would have much preferred to acquire Bourn’s contract than to acquire Pence’s.

hk, We can use fWAR. Since 2007 Michael Bourn has complied 21.4, Josh Hamilton 25.0,

I ask again, is one player worth 2.5 times the other?

In your original comment you compared the packages given up for Bourn and Pence, and you correctly called the Pence package too large. George, while agreeing it was an overpay, as I just did, said the players had different skill sets and therefore different values to the purchasing organizations. I agreed saying that the comparison was similar to the 2012 FA contracts given to JH and MB, just for comparison. Pence by the way, has 21.1 fWAR in the same time period.

Now to your bullet points
“1. The Phils gave up much better prospects for Pence than ATL did for Bourn.”

-Agreed, easily explained in this years FA class as a player with 3.6 higher WAR since 2007, got paid more than double and a longer term.

“2. The Phils got worse production (as measured by WAR) from Pence + Schierholtz than ATL did from Bourn.”

- Not when you look at their entire body of work since 2007, a body of work is all a trading team has to look at. They can not predict future performance any better than my broker, Bill James, or the local weatherman.